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I've read a couple of good books lately.
The first one I want to talk about is Newton's Wake, by Ken MacLeod (I've linked to this before). It's SF, set several hundred years post-Singularity. The AIs, after wreaking great amounts of destruction (they were military, Skynet-style things) have lost interest and gone... somewhere... leaving humans in control of the ruins of Earth. By the time the book starts, there are four major power blocs: the Knights of Enlightenment, who are into Zen, biofeedback yoga, general machismo and investigating posthuman tech in a very cautious, hands-off way; the DK (expansion unknown), who are into Communism, self-reliance, ideological orthodoxy and strip-mining entire planets; America Offline, who are into Jesus Koresh, terraforming, and huge monoculture farms; and the Carlyle Gang, who are a bunch of two-bit gangsters from the South Side of Glasgow, who somehow managed to gain control of a galaxy-spanning wormhole network. The book starts when one of the Carlyle's combat archeology missions discovers a terraformed, civilized planet, whose survivors believed hitherto that they were the only survivors of the AI war. A certain amount of mental adjustment is called for by both sides. Anyway, it's great SF, very Scottish, and I literally couldn't put it down. Similar in some respects to Iain M. Banks. I think a few book tokens may go on some of his other books.
Currently, I'm reading Evelyn Waugh's Officers and Gentlemen. It's the second book in a trilogy (I haven't read the first one) about the Second World War. So far, it's been about a Commando troop led by a very upper-class officer, who naturally picks all his friends from the club to lead his troops. So you have the prewar gilded youth huddled together in a windswept island in the Orkneys, playing at being Special Forces. I haven't read much Waugh, and not for ages, but it's very nicely written, and quite funny in a wry, despairing way.
The first one I want to talk about is Newton's Wake, by Ken MacLeod (I've linked to this before). It's SF, set several hundred years post-Singularity. The AIs, after wreaking great amounts of destruction (they were military, Skynet-style things) have lost interest and gone... somewhere... leaving humans in control of the ruins of Earth. By the time the book starts, there are four major power blocs: the Knights of Enlightenment, who are into Zen, biofeedback yoga, general machismo and investigating posthuman tech in a very cautious, hands-off way; the DK (expansion unknown), who are into Communism, self-reliance, ideological orthodoxy and strip-mining entire planets; America Offline, who are into Jesus Koresh, terraforming, and huge monoculture farms; and the Carlyle Gang, who are a bunch of two-bit gangsters from the South Side of Glasgow, who somehow managed to gain control of a galaxy-spanning wormhole network. The book starts when one of the Carlyle's combat archeology missions discovers a terraformed, civilized planet, whose survivors believed hitherto that they were the only survivors of the AI war. A certain amount of mental adjustment is called for by both sides. Anyway, it's great SF, very Scottish, and I literally couldn't put it down. Similar in some respects to Iain M. Banks. I think a few book tokens may go on some of his other books.
Currently, I'm reading Evelyn Waugh's Officers and Gentlemen. It's the second book in a trilogy (I haven't read the first one) about the Second World War. So far, it's been about a Commando troop led by a very upper-class officer, who naturally picks all his friends from the club to lead his troops. So you have the prewar gilded youth huddled together in a windswept island in the Orkneys, playing at being Special Forces. I haven't read much Waugh, and not for ages, but it's very nicely written, and quite funny in a wry, despairing way.
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